


can you play me a memory

by livbartlet



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-21 00:00:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20236525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livbartlet/pseuds/livbartlet
Summary: Earthly wanderings of one Lee Adama





	can you play me a memory

Here’s the thing: Lee does not live or die on this new Earth alone.

For a year or so, he thinks he will. He believes what he said to Kara before she disappeared, that there are continents to explore and mountains to climb — a whole new planet to see, experience. And that he will be fine— happy— with this as his life.

But then something changes. He won’t say that loneliness arrives as a gut punch, it’s sneakier than that. It’s...he thinks of Kara and Dee, of love and marriage and all the ways he fucked up everything...it’s the wishful thinking of other outcomes. If Dee hadn’t despaired so desperately, if Kara hadn’t died and returned and then gone again...Lee thinks of all that could and should have been.

Not should as in he deserves certain things — should as in why did he live and why are they gone when it should be them who remain?

And not could as in dismantling the mountain of his regrets, just could they have found happiness, finally, here?

He wanders between scattered settlements, he maps this new world as he told himself he would. But who will he give the maps to? Why is he building a legacy that will never become...such as legacies are wont to be, passed from father to son?

Lee sees his father one last time. The old man has aged a decade at least. But he’s peaceful, too— in the cabin he built with his own two hands, on the bluff with a view that reminds him of Laura.

“You’ve still got a lot of life to live, son,” Bill says on an exhale of some bitter red cigar he’s rolled by hand, some herb he discovered.

“I don’t know,” Lee chokes a little on the smoke. The hippie herbs and the newly-distilled alcohol — it’s like Bill is someone else, as if even though Laura died, he kept living the life they would have had together. “Kara—” He can’t finish the thought, it’s the thought that chokes him more than the smoke. And only his dad understands, how Kara reached in and grabbed hold of your heart and you were never the same, and you should be the happier for just having known her, but that the loss of her is a trauma still.

“She’d want you to be happy,” Bill says.

“Real original, Dad,” Lee counters, but there’s no bite to it, there’s none of the ways he used to butt heads with the old man. It’s a comforting kind of sentiment. And it’s true, really, when he considers their last moments together — Kara wanted him to be happy.

So why isn’t he?

How did his grand plans for exploration and adventure — the invigorating fulfillment of his post-military, post-colonies dreams — how did it end up feeling so empty?

He wanders north again and considers the subtext of his father’s advice — don’t spend the rest of your life alone, Lee — and rejects the idea so many times it begins to take hold.

Deep and quiet, beneath the visible of layers of Lee “Apollo” Adama, the idea takes hold.

Maybe he isn’t meant to live alone. Maybe Dee and Kara were not all the world had to offer. Or maybe he still has something to offer. Maybe there is room in his heart yet.

The northern days grow short and cold and he stumbles across Tyrol’s outpost and stays for a while. At the hearth of the communal hall, a woman plucks at the strings of a new instrument. Lee listens to her tune and refine the notes over the course of a week. She’s blond and strong but wistful too, and to Lee’s surprise he finds he doesn’t mind that she’s a Six, a Cylon. Here and now she’s just a fellow traveler, and one who offers music.

“Can you play me a memory,” he asks, when she smiles down at the instrument with the satisfaction of a task completed.

She smiles at him then, and the notes she plucks and the tune she hums are both old and full of new hope.


End file.
